Pioneer LaserActive Repairs

BlackaneseNiNjA

The Fatal Fury Disciple
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The other day I was gaming on the LaserActive and experienced some issues when playing one of the LDRom titles. A common problem when working on these units is getting the disc tray out of the locked position to work on the machine components. If the power is turned off and the laser/disc spindle assembly has not had a chance to retract back into the lower resting position, it can seem impossible to get the tray to back out. If you are unable to access or locate the gear assembly inside the unit to manually turn the gears, an alternative way to unwind the tray is to open the center cd access door on the front of the unit and carefully use a flat head screwdriver to gently rotate the white gears counterclockwise to slowly open the tray.
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With the tray open and the top casing removed (2 screws on each side and 5 on the rear panel), it’s possible to work on the components.

In this case, I suspected a capacitor failure but after a few repair sessions it actually boiled down to needing to reseat the laser position switches. When these fail or the small pegs lose their position the laser will be unable to correctly position itself to read media and will keep hitting the spindle.
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Hopefully, this will help someone else needing to do a little repair/maintenance work on one of these.
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BlackaneseNiNjA

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Was playing Strider on this unit the other day using the Arcade Card Duo and I noticed that though I had cd audio (stage music), the unit lost all sound effects. After a bit of troubleshooting, I remember this being a common issue on Duo units, but I’ve never heard of an LA PAC (pac-n1) experiencing the same issue. (I checked using a different sega PAC unit and the sound output was just fine.)

Old threads about the sound issue:

As recommended, I let the unit rest/cool down over night (ejected the PAC from the main LA player) and sure enough, the sound effects were playing at normal levels again. I’m not sure if this is an IC or cap issue, but since the low sound output issue was common with Duos even in the early 2000’s, the fix must be the similar for these PAC units. I’ll keep working on this one, but I wanted to post for anyone who may encounter this issue with a Laser Active PC Engine PAC unit.
 
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SignOfGoob

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Oh man, good luck. Those PAC units fail caps horribly and rot the fuck out of themselves. This is a well known issue among people who have repaired them. Hopefully you can save this one but man…it’s been leaking long time by now…

There’s no real relation to the Duo issue. Totally different PCB and caps. Way more well made yet still ended up rotting even worse.
 

Burning Fight!!

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Dude, don't sit around with the PAC, that is definitely a capacitor issue: replace caps ASAP, usually if the sound amp caps are failing that means you probably already have leakage and "infected" traces and copper plane corroding. Personal experience with them.
 

Tw3ek

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Dude, don't sit around with the PAC, that is definitely a capacitor issue: replace caps ASAP, usually if the sound amp caps are failing that means you probably already have leakage and "infected" traces and copper plane corroding. Personal experience with them.
Cannot second this enough, those things were doomed from the start with the low quality components they used.
 

BlackaneseNiNjA

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Thanks everyone :buttrock: I worked on the board and did the caps years ago, but when this issue started happening a few days ago the only thing that seemed even remotely close to what I was observing was that duo issue. :scratch: The sound was there, but it was just extremely faint.
 

terry.330

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If you have any other PACs I'd re-cap those as well because they all have terrible components.

Then I'd sell it.
 

BlackaneseNiNjA

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If you have any other PACs I'd re-cap those as well because they all have terrible components.

Then I'd sell it.

Whats up terry.330, yeah both of the sega pacs were taken care of back then too.

lol I play it pretty often. To each their own.
 

segasonicfan

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Cool to see some Laseractive love on here. I documented a repair on my website a while back and used to own 3x of them back when they were cheap. Such a cool piece of tech. But no fun to work on nowadays.
 

Raph4

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I need check mine, laser looks locked too 😫
 

Fritz

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Oh man, good luck. Those PAC units fail caps horribly and rot the fuck out of themselves. This is a well known issue among people who have repaired them. Hopefully you can save this one but man…it’s been leaking long time by now…

There’s no real relation to the Duo issue. Totally different PCB and caps. Way more well made yet still ended up rotting even worse.

I checked my Sega pack last week after like 6-7 years or it sitting and me not getting around to having it re-capped. It has never been capped.

Surprisingly, the sound is still working great and there is no leaking. I still need to get it done but no damage *yet*.
 

Capitalistix

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Whats up terry.330, yeah both of the sega pacs were taken care of back then too.

lol I play it pretty often. To each their own.

Good to see someone loving the Laseractive like I do! I've had one in the past and absolutely loved it. Had to sell it but am looking to buy another soon and use it as my main 16bit machine. Have you seen the RGB mod that's come out for it in recent years? That's really the only reason I sold mine back in the day, my Genesis just looked better in RGB than the composite of the LA.

Now with RGB it really can be the best of both worlds.
 

terry.330

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Why on earth would you use that over a regular MD or PCE?

The LD games all suck and it's a terrible LD player compared to even mid range Pioneer dedicated units.

If you modify it for RGB does it still output composite as well? Because LD looks like shit without comb filters.
 
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Burning Fight!!

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Why on earth would you use that over a regular MD or PCE?

The LD games all suck and it's a terrible LD player compared to even mid range Pioneer dedicated units.

If you modify it for RGB does it still output composite as well? Because LD looks like shit without comb filters.

It’s not anyone’s first choice and a dumb buy but I like mine now that’s all serviced and with a new lens assembly. It’s aight.

There are some decent LD games but it’s a curiosity for sure. Triad Stone is too fun to pass up and it’s the only place you can play 2 JB Harold titles in English so it has its brain damaged fans like me :p
 

terry.330

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It’s not anyone’s first choice and a dumb buy but I like mine now that’s all serviced and with a new lens assembly. It’s aight.

There are some decent LD games but it’s a curiosity for sure. Triad Stone is too fun to pass up and it’s the only place you can play 2 JB Harold titles in English so it has its brain damaged fans like me :p
At least you're fully aware of your goobery. That goes a long way.

Lately I've seen too any people trying to legitimately defend trash consoles. 3DO, Jaguar, Laseractive etc. have all been really hot lately and it kills me inside a little when I see stuff that you couldn't give away back in the day (for a good reason) going for stupid money and people discussing them along side systems like the Saturn and Neo. People used to collect this stuff ironically, like so bad they're good movies but not anymore. I get the feeling people can't tell the difference between good and bad games anymore, as long as it's retro it's awesome.

Whatever, if someone wants to mod their Laseractive to play MD games in RGB instead of just using an actual MD that's fine just don't try and tell me it's somehow better.
 
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